


play in reverse

by BonesOfBirdWings



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Boy-Who-Lived Tom Riddle, Dark Lord Harry Potter, Gets More Surreal as it Goes On, Harry Potter is Not the Boy-Who-Lived, M/M, Pre-Slash, Role Reversal, but not really, it wouldn't be me without surrealism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-18 19:03:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13106559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BonesOfBirdWings/pseuds/BonesOfBirdWings
Summary: Time is a fickle thing, and voids yearn to be filled.





	play in reverse

“Ah, curious,” Ollivander hummed, his disconcerting eyes fixed a little too fervently on Tom’s forehead. “Very curious.”

“What’s curious?” Tom Riddle demanded.

“It just so happens that the phoenix that gave a tailfeather for that wand,” Ollivander pointed one knobby finger at the pale length of wood in Tom’s hand, “gave one other feather. It is curious that you should be destined for that wand, when its brother gave you that scar.”

Tom ground his teeth together, glaring at the wand clenched in his fist. Of course. Of course he had to taint this too.

“I think we must expect great things from you, Mr. Riddle,” Ollivander continued, seemingly oblivious to Tom’s rage. “After all, the Master of Death did great things – terrible, yes, but great.”

Tom said nothing, his nails digging crescent-shaped indents into his palms. He would be great, Ollivander was right about that much. Someday he would outgrow the Master’s shadow. Someday, the Master would be a footnote in _Tom’s_ history.

Tom would make sure of it.

* * *

“Mr. Riddle?” Professor Quirrell asked curiously. “What are you doing down here?” He stood in front of an ornate mirror, shimmering runes flitting in and out of sight around him.

“I should ask you the same question,” Tom replied grimly, stepping away from the dark flames that he had passed through. The potion was still lingering in his blood – he still felt a bone-deep cold, although that was fading quickly.

“Are you surprised to see me?”

Tom shrugged. “Not particularly. I knew someone else was after the Stone, and of all the teachers, you’re the only one to arrive within the past year.”

“Hmmm.” Quirrell twirled his wand absentmindedly as he considered Tom. “I did consider pretending to be incompetent, but I would never negatively impact your education.” He shrugged. “Oh well, it’s not like it matters now.” He turned his attention away from Tom and back to the mirror.

Tom grit his teeth, frustrated at being dismissed as a threat. He leveled his wand at the other wizard and opened his mouth to cast a spell.

Between one heartbeat and the next, he found himself trussed up with magically conjured ropes, his wand on the other side of the room.

“Sorry,” Quirrell said, still staring at the hazy runes, “can’t have you messing this up.”

Tom struggled against his bonds for a few minutes before coming to the conclusion that he wouldn’t escape so easily.

“Are you one of his?” he spat at the turbaned professor, his eyes roving the room as he tried to construct a plan.

“His?” Quirrell replied absently, twirling his wand between his fingers. “No, I’m afraid I’m my own man. At least as much as any of us can claim to belong to ourselves.”

“The Master of Death,” Tom clarified impatiently. He needed to distract Quirrell from his study of the mirror. The more time it took him to figure it out, the more time Tom had to escape. “This seems like the sort of immortality-granting magic he’d be interested in.”

To his surprise, Quirrell began to laugh. He turned his attention from the mirror and glanced up at Tom, the corners of his eyes crinkled in true amusement.

“Someone,” he said, “has given you a very inaccurate view of me.”

Tom physically recoiled. “ _You’re_ the Master of Death?” It was unbelievable. Quirrell, while a competent Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, had not demonstrated any sort of outstanding strength. In demonstration duels, his spells had been generally weaker than Flitwick’s or McGonagall’s, and from observation during meal times, Tom had concluded that Quirrell was intimidated by both Snape and Dumbledore, for very different reasons.

And of course, most notably, Quirrell had never shown any sort of animosity towards Tom. He would have expected the Master of Death to be furious about Tom’s defeat of him eleven years ago... although, looking at the perfectly healthy and fit man in front of him, Tom was unsure about how much of a “defeat” that had been.

The Master smiled at Tom, obviously deeply amused. Tom couldn’t help but bristle at the condescension.

“I am,” the Master confirmed. “I don’t know what Albus is thinking, keeping you in the dark. You’re prophesized to kill me, you know.”

“What,” said Tom.

The Master waved his hand dismissively. “Hogwash, of course,” he said airly. “Or maybe not. Well, if it happens, it happens. Still, I would have expected Albus to impart some sort of knowledge of me.” He frowned. “Or maybe not.”

He stared at Tom, his gaze piercing. Tom struggled not to squirm. After an interminable moment, the Master nodded firmly and turned back to the mirror.

“Albus knows me well enough,” the Master said pensively. “But I wonder....”

With a flick of the Master’s wand, Tom was flying towards the mirror. He came to an abrupt halt in front of his reflection, which _smirked_ at him. Then, it held up a shiny red stone – _the Philosopher’s Stone_ – and slipped it into its pocket with a devious grin. Tom felt a foreign weight settle into the same pocket of his robes.

But Tom didn’t have the time to feel the thrill of victory. The Master’s hand darted into the robe, and emerged grasping the Stone.

“The wards would only let someone who wanted to use the stone for themselves take the Stone out of the mirror,” the Master explained to a silent, furious Tom. “Albus knew that I could never want the Stone for myself. Very ingenious, really.” He grinned, his smile bright and sharp. “I guess there’s really no need to ask why you followed me in.”

Suddenly, a rhythmic clanging echoed throughout the room. The Master scowled and flicked his wand curtly. The sound ceased, and he turned to Tom.

“Albus is coming,” the Master told Tom, with something close to regret on his pale features. “I must leave – for now, of course. I’m not sure we could separate entirely.”

Before Tom could process his words, the Master sent a stunner shooting towards Tom, and then he knew no more.

* * *

A month after he met the Master in the room beneath the third floor corridor, a journal appeared on Tom’s pillow.

He was back in his foster home for the summer and he had finished his homework weeks ago. He had sufficiently cowed his current foster siblings before he left for Hogwarts, so they only needed a few reminders before they were all giving him a wide berth. His foster parents only cared about him when calculating the government stipend, and although he had made a wealth of valuable connections at Hogwarts, none of them would send him a _journal_.

Since he was unable to _actually_ perform any detection spells during the summer, he poked it with his wand before grabbing it with a napkin, just in case it was cursed with a spell that required skin contact for activation. Cautiously, he nudged it open with his wand.

“ _Hello, Tom_ ,” spilled across the page in messy writing. It lingered for a few moments before fading away.

Tom froze, staring at the now-blank page. He debated shutting the diary and throwing it out with the trash, but his curiosity won out. With a fresh quill, he wrote back, “ _Who is this?_ ”

“ _Tom_ ,” the other person scrawled. “ _I’m hurt. One month and you’ve already managed to forget all about me._ ”

Tom sneered. “ _The Master of Death_ ,” he replied, his quill digging into the paper. “ _I should have known._ ”

“ _Yes_ ,” the Master agreed, and something about that made the blood boil in Tom’s veins. He clenched his quill in a white-knuckled grip.

“ _How do I know you are who you say you are?_ ” he questioned.

“ _Why would anyone_ pretend _to be me?_ ” the Master wrote back, but before Tom could reply, he continued, “ _We met in a room with a mirror, far beneath a three-headed dog. I used you to get the Stone. Good enough?_ ”

“ _Good enough_ ,” Tom agreed grudgingly.

“ _I would come talk to you in person_ ,” the Master explained, “ _but Albus has too many layers of wards up around your Muggle residence._ ”

Tom watched as the ink faded from the page. There was a long pause.

“ _I just –_ ” the phrase was quickly scribbled out. Before it faded, the Master started to write again. “ _I wanted to talk._ ”

Still, Tom did not reply. He didn’t know what to think of the man on the other side of the diary. He had accepted that his preconceptions about the Master of Death were entirely false. There were buried, silent truths here – he could feel the shape of them.

“ _Tom? Are you still there?_ ”

His ignorance was infuriating. He’d had to rely on books written by people too far removed from the Master to have an accurate view of him, and the people who understood the Master the best were unwilling to talk to Tom. 

“ _Tom?_ ”

The only person who seemed willing to talk to Tom about the Master of Death was the Master himself. And no matter what the Master’s motives were in reaching out to him, if Tom wanted more information, he’d have to play along.

“ _I’m here_ ,” he wrote back. “ _Sorry for the delay._ ”

“ _It’s fine_ ,” the Master replied immediately. “ _You have no obligation to listen to me._ ”

“ _I want to hear what you have to say_ ,” Tom wrote, entirely truthful. Conversations were the best way to trip someone else into revealing their weaknesses.

“ _Well, I didn’t really have anything planned out_ ,” the Master wrote, “ _but I have some ideas in case I had to entice you into talking to me._ ”

 _What do you really want?_ Tom wanted to write. _Why are you pretending we’re friendly? What do you expect to get out of this?_ But that it would show too much of his confusion and give too much control of the conversation to the Master.

“ _I’m not occupied with anything else. What sort of ideas?_ ” he replied instead.

“ _Well, I could tell you about alchemy_ ,” the Master answered, “ _I’ve had to learn a lot about that in recent weeks._ ”

Tom scowled at the journal, remembering the feeling of the Master’s hand dipping into his pocket, the helpless, furious defeat.

“ _Sure_ ,” he wrote back, jaw clenched in rage. “ _Sounds great._ ”

* * *

“ _We have a terrible Defense teacher_ ,” Tom wrote in the journal.

“ _Oh?_ ” the Master replied with a quickness that still surprised Tom after months of conversation. He knew that the man must have more important things to do – especially considering that even after an entire summer, neither Tom nor the Master had touched on any deep, important topics. They had talked about everything from obscure magical theory to the banal minutiae of their lives, but Tom felt no closer to understanding the man than he had at the beginning of the summer. He knew that the Master must be feeling the same way – Tom carefully let no important details slip into this seemingly casual conversation.

“ _Gilderoy Lockhart._ ”

There was a long pause. Tom wondered, once again, what exactly he thought he was _doing_. He might have started talking with the Master to see what he could glean from their conversations, but he realized that somewhere along the line, that had ceased to be his only motivation for writing in the journal.

But he refused to examine that thought too closely. The Master continued to be useful, and that was that.

“ _Lockhart?_ ” the Master replied. “ _Merlin, I am so sorry._ ”

“ _You should be_ ,” Tom wrote. “ _You, at least, were a competent defense teacher._ ”

“ _Thank you, but not quite what I meant._ ”

“ _What_ did _you mean then?_ ” Tom’s patience had run out about halfway through his first Defense Against the Dark Arts class and he had none left to spare.

“ _I’ve heard some concerning rumors about him. Specifically, about him and memory charms._ ”

Tom hummed thoughtfully, tapping his fingers on the journal. “ _I’d like to hear more about those rumors._ ”

“ _What are you planning, Tom?_ ”

“ _Nothing!_ ” he wrote back with a smirk. “ _I just need to know any unsavory details about my teacher! My last Defense teacher tried to kill me, you know._ ”

“ _I did not, you little brat_ ,” There was a long pause. “ _Fine then. On your own head be it._ ”

* * *

“ _I think_ ,” Tom wrote, his hand trembling, “ _that I might have miscalculated._ ”

“ _I told you_ ,” the Master replied, each letter penned deliberately, “ _that it would be on your own head. The man’s incompetent at magic, but he understands manipulation._ ”

“ _How did he know?_ ” Tom demanded, a mix of fear and fury bubbling up in his throat. “ _I’ve kept my forays into illegal magic brief and secret. There’s no way –_ ”

“ _How secret did you keep your studies of borderline-legal magic?_ ” the Master interrupted.

Tom paused. “ _Not as secret as I should have_ ,” he admitted grudgingly. “ _But I know everyone who would have known about them._ ”

“ _Anyway_ ,” he continued, “ _it’s not like those were actually illegal. Being seen studying those kept the other Slytherins off my back._ ”

“ _Sure_ ,” the Master agreed, “ _but Lockhart is a consummate liar. He knows the truth that everyone who lives a lie does – that the deepest secret is the one you never see._ ”

“ _What?_ ”

“ _I mean_ ,” the Master continued, “ _that if you discover a secret about someone, something that was well-concealed, but discoverable, that means that there is likely a darker secret beneath that one. Because if that was the person’s worse secret, then they would have protected it better._ ”

“ _He found out that you weren’t being particularly discreet in your study of borderline-legal magic, and extrapolated that you would study illegal magic in secret._ ”

“ _He has no proof_ ,” Tom wrote furiously.

“ _And you don’t have proof either_ ,” the Master replied. “ _I have the proof, and I’m not going to give it to you._ ”

“ _Why not?_ ” Tom penned viciously, his quill digging into the paper.

“ _Frankly, you bungled this_ ,” the Master replied. “ _I assume that you must have confronted Lockhart with the rumors directly to get such a drastic response, and that was poorly done. You could have spread the rumors discreetly around the school until the overwhelming weight of them drove him out. You could have approached one of the teachers, concerned about some terrible rumors you heard the other day._ ”

“ _But instead, you decided on a frontal assault because you believed your enemy to be too stupid, too weak-willed, to oppose you. You underestimated him. Fix it yourself, Tom._ ”

Tom shut the book with a snap and hurled it across the room. “Some fucking help you are,” he snarled at the journal. “Fine! I don’t need you and your condescension.” He shoved the journal far under his bed and resolved to forget about it.

* * *

“ _I fixed it_ ,” Tom wrote in the journal, months later.

“ _So I saw. The news about Lockhart’s disappearance made that quite clear._ ”

Miffed, Tom replied, “ _Are you still going to be disapproving about this?_ ”

“ _Murder is another blunt force solution, Tom. Now you have a skeleton in your closet, quite literally._ ”

“ _No one will find him_ ,” Tom wrote impatiently. “ _His body is in a place only I can get to, and I didn’t actually kill him. He told no one where we were going, probably because he intended to obliviate me, and no one saw us together, not even the portraits._ ”

“ _And you have no guilt about any of this?_ ”

“ _No_ ,” Tom answered firmly. “ _He was going to destroy my reputation, and at this stage, I couldn’t afford that._ ”

“ _Why?_ ” he couldn’t help but ask. “ _Do you have some kind of_ moral objection _to murder?_ ”

“ _Like most people_ ,” the Master replied, “ _yes._ ”

Tom scoffed. “ _That’s hypocritical. Who was the person who killed my parents, again?_ ”

“ _There’s a difference between murder and mercy._ ”

“ _Oh, my parents were a mercy killing_ ,” Tom wrote with a sneer. “ _I see. Then I guess we could also class killing Lockhart as a mercy. If I was as stupid as he was, I wouldn’t want to live another day._ ”

“ _Whatever, Tom_ ,” the Master replied. “ _Just know that if you continue to use such ham-handed methods to accomplish your goals, it will come back to bite you._ ”

“ _Wouldn’t that be a benefit to you?_ ” Tom wanted to know. “ _You mentioned a prophecy before._ ”

The Master didn’t reply to that, or anything else Tom wrote after it. Finally, with a huff, Tom gave up and closed the journal for the night.

* * *

The next morning, Tom woke up to two new sentences in the journal.

“ _If I sent the transcript of our conversation last night to the Aurors, you would be on your way to Azkaban._ ”

And, more chilling, “ _What’s the deeper secret, Tom?_ ”

* * *

“ _Why_ ,” Tom wrote in the journal, pouring his fury into every letter, “ _are there_ dementors _at Hogwarts?_ ”

The Master was uncharacteristically silent. Tom checked periodically throughout the next day before finally stuffing the journal under his bed.

“ _Apparently_ ,” Tom continued, a couple of days later, “ _one of your followers broke out from Azkaban. Thanks ever so much._ ”

“ _Learn the Patronus charm_ ,” the Master answered, a full week later. “ _And he’s not one of mine._ ”

* * *

“ _I’m really supposed to believe that Morfin Gaunt isn’t one of your followers? They said he betrayed Merope to you_.”

“ _Tom_ ,” the Master replied, his exhaustion betrayed in every sloppily-shaped letter. “ _I don’t care what you believe at this point._ ”

“ _He’s my uncle_ ,” Tom wrote with as much authority as he could muster. “ _And people are speculating that he’ll come after me. I need to know._ ”

“ _Yes, he’ll probably come after you. He’s enough of a radical pureblood that he’ll hate the thought of one of his blood being used to support the muggleborn agenda. But again, he’s a radical pureblood – they tend to hate me._ ”

“ _I thought you were a radical pureblood_ ,” Tom replied.

“ _Tom, really._ ”

“ _Well, this whole situation would make more sense if you were!_ ”

“ _So sorry to disappoint._ ” Tom knew the Master was laughing at him. “ _But we’ve been talking long enough that I’m sure you’ve gotten a good idea of my political views._ ”

“ _How_ ,” Tom wrote back quickly, finally expressing months of confusion, “ _did a bloody_ moderate _become a dark lord?_ ”

“ _I’m not really a dark lord_ ,” the Master explained. “ _But I am really bad at politics. And..._ ” the Master paused. “ _There was a void. I just happened to fill it._ ”

Tom didn’t know what to make of the second half of that, so he focused on the important bit. “ _So I can ignore all your hypocritical disapproval about how I handled Lockhart. Good to know._ ”

“ _Oh, get off your high horse, Tom. I was really bad at politics. I’ve gotten better, but it’s difficult to break out of the vigilante business after you get started._ ”

Tom snorted. “ _So being in the “vigilante business”, are you hunting down Morfin Gaunt?_ ” he teased. “ _Going to knife him in the back before he kills me in my sleep?_ ”

“ _But of course, Tom_ ,” the Master replied, shaping his letters with a strange, solemn deliberation. “ _Your safety is of the utmost importance to me._ ”

Tom didn’t know how to respond to that. Eventually, he gently shut the journal and slipped it into his bag, with the oddest sense that he was missing something rather important.

* * *

“Get away from me!” Tom snarled at the emaciated man who was crouched in the middle of the Shrieking Shack. He fought to keep his wand steady – the pain from his broken leg was making his vision swim and his body tremble.

Morfin cackled, creeping slowly closer to Tom. “What do you think you can do about it, boy?” he hissed, the sibilant quality of his voice the only hint that he was speaking Parseltongue. “Poor little Tommy, all alone,” he began to sing.

Enraged, Tom leveled his wand at Morfin’s forehead. “ _St-_ ”

Before he could utter more than one syllable, Morfin moved with an unexpected speed and snatched the wand right out of Tom’s hands.

“That wasn’t very nice, Tommy,” Morfin said with a pout, caressing the wand with one skeletal hand. “I just wanna get to know you. Just wanna get to know my nephew. Merope’s brat.”

His expression hardened, fury shining in his crazed eyes. “Filthy mudblood brat,” he spat, and Tom ached to correct him, to claim that bit of pure blood, but he kept the words locked up behind his teeth. He was painfully aware of the wand in Morfin’s hands, and the fanaticism in the man’s eyes.

“Look just like your father,” his uncle hissed. “Dirty muggle. Always so arrogant, looking down his nose at us. Didn’t know his station.”

Suddenly, Morfin’s face was right in front of his, so close that Tom could smell his rancid breath. Cold, bony fingers clutched Tom’s cheeks as the point of his own wand dug into his neck. Tom froze.

“Look just like your father,” his uncle repeated. “Are you looking down on me, mudblood?”

Tom swallowed thickly. All he could see in Morfin’s eyes was a terrible, all-consuming madness. He didn’t know what the right answer was – what Morfin was looking for.

“Well?” Morfin demanded, when Tom failed to answer. “Are you too good to talk to me, filth?” Before Tom could even think of replying, Morfin had stepped back and hissed, “ _Crucio!_ ”

Overwhelming pain consumed him, shrieking along every nerve. He couldn’t think, he couldn’t breathe – he distantly heard a long, drawn-out scream.

He didn’t know how much time passed, but from far away, he heard a voice say, over the incessant screaming: “I think that’s enough of that, then.”

Abruptly, the pain ceased. Aftershocks zinged through his muscles, but he was able to blearily open his eyes. He was laying on the dusty floor of the shack, curled in a fetal position. Tom swallowed, and noticed that his throat was raw. He realized disconnectedly that he must have been the one screaming.

“This is family business, mudblood,” hissed Morfin. Tom rolled onto his back so that he could see who his uncle was talking to.

The other man was dressed in long, black robes – Tom wasn’t an expert on wizarding fashion, but even he could tell that the cut was fairly old fashioned. A hood threw his face into shadow, and whatever his hood didn’t conceal, an obscuring spell took care of. Sewn over his breast was a familiar symbol in silver thread – a circle inscribed in a triangle and bisected by a long line.

“You are singularly uncreative,” the Master told Morfin, his body language relaxed and unruffled. Tom had a brief stab of envy for the Master’s composure. “And completely incorrect, as per usual. No one in this room is muggleborn.”

Morfin stared at the man in shock. Tom didn’t understand why, until he hissed, “You understand me?”

They were all still speaking Parseltongue, Tom realized with a jolt. He was disappointed in himself for not picking up on that faster, but his self-recrimination was overshadowed by his utter disbelief. The Master of Death was also a Parselmouth. Tom and the Master were both Parselmouths.

“Mmm, if you’re talking about Parseltongue,” the Master said, in Parseltongue, “yes, I do. If you’re talking about your rather illogical views on blood purity, then no, I don’t understand in the least.”

“Are we related?” Tom asked. He immediately cursed himself for a fool – he didn’t want to draw either wizard’s attention while he was wandless and defenseless, curled up on the floor like a weak, powerless animal.

“As much as any two halfbloods are,” the Master threw out carelessly. He didn’t turn his hood to look at Tom, his gaze presumably still fixed on Morfin, who hadn’t let his attention slip from the Master for a moment. Tom hadn’t wanted the attention of either wizard, but this casual dismissal rankled. It felt like he had asked the wrong question.

“You sully the line of Slytherin,” Morfin spat, jabbing Tom’s wand at the Master in punctuation. “And debase the line of Gaunt with that symbol. _Crucio!_ ”

The Master easily side-stepped the spell, and shot a wordless spell back at Morfin, who blocked it with a shield. Tom hadn’t even seen him draw his wand. “That symbol is not your family’s, Morfin. It has, and will always be, mine.” Morfin snarled at him.

They began to volley spells back and forth, only a handful of which Tom recognized. He quickly realized that the Master was a creative and canny dueler, and that Morfin was hopelessly outclassed. The man was barely able to keep up with the Master, and all his attempts at offense were roundly rebuffed.

Tom sighed. The Master was obviously just playing with Morfin. As interesting as it was to see his impressive repertoire of curses, he couldn’t help but wish that the Master would hurry up and reclaim Tom’s wand from the man.

Reasonably satisfied that the two men were too occupied with each other to pay attention to him, Tom scooted back and used the wall as a support so that he could finally sit upright. 

It was a careless move. Tom realized his poor judgment immediately, as the movement was enough to remind Morfin that Tom was still here – and was a much easier target than the Master of Death. With a mad gleam in his eyes, Morfin turned his wand on Tom.

“ _Avada –_ ”

“ _Stupefy!_ ”

A jet of red light hit Morfin in the chest, and he keeled over, unconscious. The Master conjured ropes binding him with a flick of his wand.

He strode over to Morfin long enough to pluck Tom’s wand from his uncle’s hand, and then approached Tom, holding the wand out handle-first.

“Foolish,” the man said, without the telltale hiss of Parseltongue. When speaking in English and not disguising his voice as Quirrell, the Master actually had a pleasant tenor voice.

“Me, or him?” Tom croaked, snatching the wand away from the Master. It hummed happily against his palm.

“Both,” the Master replied. His face was still entirely obscured, and it was disquieting to have no facial expressions to help him discern the man’s mood. “Maybe foolishness runs in the family.”

Tom scowled. “That’s cute,” he snapped. “I suppose you’re going to add another member of my ‘foolish family’ to your kill count? Maybe two?”

The Master laughed, infuriating Tom. The man was even more aggravating in person. “If I was going to kill you, Tom,” he said mildly, “trying to irritate me would not be the best strategy.”

“I’m not irritating you,” the boy stated with certainty.

The Master cocked his hooded head to one side. “No,” he replied, “you’re not.” He paused for a moment more, and Tom desperately wished he could see his face.

“Can you take off the obscuring spell?” Tom found himself asking before he could stop himself.

The Master chuckled. “Not this time, Tom. I’m sure that the authorities are going to be suspicious of all of this – and if you play your cards as terribly as you did with Lockhart, I don’t want them seeing my true face. I like my anonymity.”

Tom recoiled, weirdly stung by the Master’s refusal. “I know Occlumency,” he protested.

“Do you,” the Master said flatly, and Tom felt a nudge from inside his skull.

He jerked his eyes down and away from the Master’s hood, but he knew the damage had already been done.

“Next time, maybe,” the Master said, “after you’ve had some more practice.”

Tom shrugged, tired and humiliated by this conversation. “What are you going to do with him?” he asked, inelegantly changing the subject.

“Feed him to the dementors,” the Master replied easily. “Easiest solution. How’s your Patronus?”

“Terrible,” Tom admitted.

“Hmm,” the Master hummed. “Not surprising, really.” When Tom glared at the hem of his robes, unwilling fix his eyes anywhere near the shadowy hood, the Master elaborated, “Happiness doesn’t really seem your style.”

“I tried,” Tom said, feeling like he needed to defend himself.

“I know,” the Master replied in a soft voice. Tom wanted to hate him for the condescension, but he couldn’t muster up the energy. “It’s fine, Tom. I’ll heal you up and dump you at the castle. It’s up to you to explain the lingering effects of the Cruciatus – I can’t do anything about that.”

Tom nodded, several possible explanations already running through his mind. “Dump him by the Quidditch pitch?” he requested tiredly.

The Master nodded, kneeling down to run his wand along Tom’s broken leg. “That I can do.” His touch was unexpectedly gentle. Tom didn’t know what to think.

Half an hour later, Tom was spinning his story to a group of hovering professors in the hospital wing. It was laughably easy, and Tom’s fingers itched for a quill and his journal. He stamped down on the urge viciously and tried, with only partial success, to focus on his own necessary manipulations.

* * *

“ _Why?_ ” Tom wrote in the journal that night, not expecting a reply.

“ _I can’t explain it to you_ ,” the Master wrote back a week later. “ _There are reasons, and sometimes I dream –_ ”

The sentence was left unfinished. “ _Dream what?_ ” Tom asked.

“ _That is the question_ ,” the Master replied cryptically, and said no more.

* * *

“ _Why did my name come out of the Goblet of Fire?_ ” Tom wrote to the Master, irritation sharpening every stroke.

“ _Did you put it in?_ ” the Master quickly replied.

“ _Of course not_ ,” Tom wrote. “ _Did you?_ ”

“ _No, I didn’t._ ” The Master paused. “ _I’ll see what I can dig up._ ”

Tom sighed. The Master hadn’t even been on his list of suspects – he’d had a clean chance to get rid of Tom last year, so he didn’t think that the man would implement a convoluted strategy to kill him now.

No, the culprit was likely living in Hogwarts, waiting for the perfect time to off Tom and make it look like an accident.

“ _Send me some books_ ,” Tom demanded, knowing already that the Master wasn’t going to acquiesce. “ _I need to study._ ”

“ _Go the library_ ,” the Master retorted, as expected. “ _There are some books that might be helpful in the restricted section – and if getting a pass isn’t easy for you, then I’ve overestimated you._ ” 

Tom snorted. “ _You haven’t._ ” He already had a signed restricted pass tucked away in his school bag. “ _Thanks for the advice_ ,” he added teasingly.

“ _Free of charge, even_ ,” the Master replied. “ _Just for you._ ”

* * *

In the restricted section, Tom found a book without a title. Its leather cover was worn and unadorned. He flipped through it briefly, but found it unimportant for the first task. He reshelved it.

 _An Analysis of the Rise and Fall of the Dark Lord Grindelwald_ , the insert read.

 _Scholars argue that the defeat of Grindelwald should not have happened_ , began Chapter 18 – The Fall. _The order of events makes little sense, especially considering Grindelwald’s previous history. There is no reason that Harry Potter should have won their duel._

_First and foremost, there is no reason that Harry Potter should have confronted the Dark Lord. He was still in school at the time. He has never explained his motivations or reasoning, and could not be interviewed for this book, since he was the first victim of the Dark Lord known as the Master of Death. No researcher has even been able to determine how, exactly, Potter managed to travel from his N.E.W.T examinations in Hogwarts to Grindelwald’s stronghold in Germany._

_Ignoring the implausibility of Harry Potter appearing in this precise place at this precise time, it stretches the bounds of credibility to claim that Potter should have defeated the Dark Lord at all. When battling Potter, Gellert Grindelwald’s final spell was a paltry_ Expelliarmus _, completely unsuited for the duel at hand. When asked later why he had chosen that spell, Grindelwald replied, ‘You’ll have to forgive me – I thought I was fighting a more skilled duelist.’_

 _Grindelwald has never explained the ambiguity in this comment – whether he believed that Harry Potter was more skilled than he truly was, or that he was dueling another wizard entirely. One of the foremost scholars on Gellert Grindelwald, Albus Dumbledore, has stated that he firmly believes that Grindelwald did not see Harry Potter in the moment that he fired the_ Expelliarmus, _but has since refused to elaborate._

* * *

Tom struggled against his restraints, his eyes fixed on the congregation of black-masked figures. This was the endgame, the final twist that Tom hadn’t seen coming. He’d thought that they would try to kill him during the tasks. He hadn’t expected the ambush after he’d won the tournament. He cursed himself for a fool.

He still didn’t know what these wizards wanted. They weren’t focused on him, but on some sort of runic circle that they had sketched in the center of the graveyard. They were all strangely expectant.

Minutes after Tom had disappeared from the maze and been tied to a gravestone, a crack rang out through the graveyard, and a familiar figure in old-fashioned robes appeared.

Tom felt a swift and painful stab of betrayal that stole his breath away. For a moment, he couldn’t think through the haze of rage and denial.

“What,” the Master said, his voice as icy as Tom had ever heard it, “do you think you’re doing?”

The words were directed at the masked wizards, and some of them physically quailed under the force of the Master’s disapproval. A wave of relief swept through Tom as he realized that this hadn’t been orchestrated by the Master. He scowled at his own weakness a moment later.

“Why, Master,” the leader of the masked wizards said obsequiously, “we only wished to fulfill one of your deepest desires.”

“Don’t call me that,” the Master ordered. “And what do you hope to gain by,” he made a sweeping motion with his hand to encompass the whole graveyard, “all of this?”

“Immortality,” one of the masked wizards cried. “Eternal life,” said another. The leader held up a hand to quell his followers.

“We all know the tale, even though the Ministry has tried to suppress it,” the leader explained to the silent Master of Death eagerly. “The hallows – the wand, the stone, and the cloak. We know that you walked into a house of death, and walked out even though the wizarding world declared you dead.”

“So what are you offering me?” the Master asked, his voice void of emotion.

Tom could see the leader’s mouth curl up into a smirk beneath his mask. “Are you saying that you don’t recognize a resurrection ritual, _Master_?”

“Of course I do,” the Master replied evenly. “But what are you offering me?”

“You walked out of that house,” the leader said, and then jerked his head at Tom, “and the boy survived, but two people walked in who didn’t walk out – your Reapers.”

The Master froze, his limbs settling into unnatural stillness. “Yes,” he confirmed, slowly, dangerously.

The leader barreled on, either unaware or uncaring of his precarious position. “So we are offering you your Reapers back – your... friends, for your immortality.”

The Master cocked his head to one side. “The dead,” he stated, with a terrible gentleness, “should never be disturbed.” His thumb meditatively stroked the base of his ring finger, like he was toying with an invisible ring.

“Of course, of course,” the leader backpedaled. The Master deliberately strode towards the runic circle, his supplicants parting before him. “A bad choice of gift? Perhaps we could –”

“You know,” the Master interrupted. “I am familiar with this ritual. You’ve all already tied yourselves to the circle, haven’t you?”

“Oh, yes, we have!” the leader said brightly. “All that’s needed is the ritual words and the sacrifice of the boy –”

The Master pointed his wand at the circle – not the plain, light-wooded wand that Tom had seen before, but a strange wand with bulbous carvings interspersed along its length. At its reveal, the assembled wizards began whispering furiously.

The Master spoke a single word. Tom couldn’t make out what it was, since it was immediately swallowed up by an explosion of power from the nexus of the runic circle. The magic washed over and through Tom, stealing his breath away. The Master’s robes streamed out behind him, and his hood was flung back, exposing a riotous mess of dark hair.

The other wizards in the graveyard cried out as the magic surged over them. Tom had a moment to see the horrified expression on the leader’s unmasked face before the magic began to eat away at him.

Screams filled the night as the magic took its rightful forfeit, consuming, bit by bit, the wizards that had foolishly bound themselves to it. Within minutes, the graveyard was silent, scraps of cloth floating on the breeze.

The Master turned towards Tom, and for the first time the boy saw his face – and recognized it.

“Harry Potter?” he exclaimed. “What –”

He swiftly comprehended the implications. “You do enjoy faking your own death, don’t you?”

Harry smiled at him, a full, true smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes. It was... not as annoying as Tom had always imagined his smile to be. “I’ve gotten good at it,” the man admitted, as he gently eased Tom out of the ropes. He hissed in sympathy at Tom’s raw wrists.

“Why didn’t you take the deal?” Tom wanted to know.

Harry gazed at him fondly, a deep, aching well of grief in his green eyes. “I meant what I said,” he said softly, running his normal, light-colored wand over Tom’s abused wrists. “I miss Ron and Hermione dearly, but the dead should never be disturbed.”

“Could you have taken the deal?” Tom asked shrewdly. “Would it have even worked?”

Harry smiled wryly at him. “No,” he confirmed. “It wouldn’t have.”

Tom nodded. “I don’t –” he said slowly. “I don’t think that it was supposed to play out this way.”

Harry observed him mildly. “No?” he replied noncommittally.

Tom closed his eyes. He felt too solid, too small, too whole. A distant rage burned, and it did not touch him. “No,” he repeated. “No, there’s something missing.”

Harry gazed at him with painful sympathy. “Yes,” he agreed, and handed Tom a portkey.

Tom was whisked away, back to Hogwarts. The Master of Death honored the dead in the graveyard alone.

* * *

“ _I dream_ ,” Tom told Harry that night. “ _Sometimes I dream that Lockhart was a plain girl with too-big glasses. Sometimes I dream that I gave Morfin to the dementors myself. Sometimes I dream myself broken._ ”

“ _I dream_ ,” Harry replied while Tom was asleep. “ _I dream of many things that have never happened and never will._ ”

“ _Do you dream of me?_ ” Tom asked.

“ _Of course_ ,” Harry replied. “ _Of course I do._ ”

* * *

Tom and Harry stood in the hall of prophecy, surrounded by endless shelves of glass orbs. “Have you heard it before?” Tom asked curiously, peering up at the orb labelled with his name.

Harry shook his head. “A follower of mine overheard snatches of it, but I’ve never heard the whole thing.”

“And Dumbledore thinks that this is why you came to the house that night?” Tom asked skeptically.

Harry shrugged. “I doubt it.”

Tom stared at Harry. He met Tom’s eyes evenly, but said no more. After a moment, Tom huffed and looked away.

“You take it down,” he demanded.

Harry snorted. “Hedging your bets?”

Tom arched an eyebrow. “I’m not the one who proposed this plan,” he pointed out. “It’s natural of me to be a little skeptical.”

Harry chuckled. “Fair,” he conceded, grasping the orb without hesitation. He was able to remove it easily.

He smirked at Tom, who scowled back. Both stepped away from each other, leaving a small patch of floor between them.

Harry cast the orb to the ground. It shattered into dust and a hazy figure rose from its remains. She looked a little like the Divination professor, before her features blurred and she looked like an entirely different woman.

“ _The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches_ ,” she rasped, and other voices murmured under hers, overlapping with each other. “ _Born to those who have –_ ” the other voices overtook hers, drowning out her words, “ _defied him. Born as –_ ” the voices once again muddled her words, “ _dies._ ”

“Is it supposed to be like this?” Tom muttered to Harry. Harry shook his head.

“ _And the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal_ ,” the ever-shifting woman intoned, “ _but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not. And either must –_ ” The voices rose to a crescendo, and the image of the woman wavered. “ _Can live while the other survives_ ,” she finished, and all the room fell silent.

Tom blinked, feeling suddenly like he was in an ill-fitting skin. He knew the words, the real words, but as he reached for them, they faded away. 

“What,” he said, breaking the deathly quiet, “was that?”

“I don’t know,” Harry easily admitted. “A prophecy, but....” He shrugged. “I think... it was at the wrong time. Or at the right time, but in the wrong when.”

Tom wanted to ask what he meant by that, but he felt it himself, deep inside.

“What are you to me?” he asked instead.

Harry gazed at him for a long moment, his expression inscrutable. “What do you want me to be, Tom?”

Tom couldn’t give him an answer. He could feel the shape of it, of the things best left hidden – the same truths that he had sensed when he was twelve and he had found a blank, leather-bound journal on his pillow.

“It is that easy?” he wondered. “Has it not already been decided?”

Harry gestured to the shards of the orb. “Obviously not.”

Tom nodded slowly. He’d already known that. The future seemed hazy, malleable, like the ever-changing features of the woman-prophet. 

They left the Department of Mysteries together, hands brushing with every step.

* * *

The day after Tom graduated from Hogwarts, he threaded his hand through Harry’s hair and guided him into a harsh kiss. Harry, when he had recovered from his surprise, responded, gentling the kiss into something deeper, softer.

“Is this what we are to be, then?” Harry asked him, with humor in his eyes.

Tom nipped at his neck. “Would you rather my wand at your throat?”

Harry just hummed, tilting his head back to give Tom better access.

Tom licked his sweat-salt skin and bit delicately at the junction of neck and shoulder, and tried to forget that there had been any option but this.

* * *

Sometimes, Harry would rub his forehead, like he was tracing an invisible symbol there.

Sometimes, Tom would look in the mirror and cold, red eyes would stare back at him.

Sometimes, they both would wake from nightmares of things that had never been. Sometimes, Harry would confide in Tom, speaking of a dragon in the bowels of Gringotts, a lake filled with the dead, a sword with a hilt of rubies. 

Tom could feel the voids in his stories, could hear the careful pauses and quick evasions, and knew that there was a deeper secret.

Sometimes, he awoke with the taste of blood on his tongue and ash in his lungs. Tom didn’t tell Harry that it felt like he was bleeding out, and that Harry was only a few stitches in a rotting wound – that the world didn’t feel real, but Harry, at least, made it less painful.

He didn’t tell him, but, then, he supposed, he didn’t need to.

**Author's Note:**

> So, it wasn't really narratively necessary to elaborate, but for those curious - my thought is that all those Harry Potters going back in time and killing Tom Riddle or raising him or fucking him or some combination thereof really damaged the causality of time. Thus, there are universes like this where people are in the wrong time or the wrong place, but there are certain roles that need filling... so someone fills them, more or less.
> 
> Anyway, hoped you liked it! It got weird at the end, because that's how the Bones do.


End file.
